Constitutional Reform which has been the subject of intermittent debate for more than a decade has come alive once again in the general election campaign.

Fundamental matters at issue are restated in a Green Paper tabled in Parliament at the end of May apparently in reaction to issues making the news in recent weeks. Among those issues are proposals to substitute Her Majesty the Queen as Jamaica's Head of State by a President, as well as the replacement of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as the nation's final Court of Appeal.

The fact that the reform proposals as embodied in the Green Paper reflected areas of agreement and differences between Government and Opposition, made it inevitable that the current election campaign would find fodder to feed on.

Hence, Bruce Golding's salvo that the Green Paper was "deficient in many respects and misleading in others" was bound to provoke a rejoinder from the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice A. J. Nicholson.

In Mr. Nicholson's response published on today's Op-Ed page, he described Golding's reaction as extremely unfortunate. He said the Green Paperwas not intended to set out in detail every item of agreement and disagreement on the reform issues - all set out in the report of the Government Select Committee of Parliament of May 31, 1995.

The revival of the argument about changing the Head of State was more than likely provoked by an opinion column by the Rev. Devon Dick about what he saw as the persistence of British rule in independent Jamaica; which also provoked other commentary on the subject. A revival of sentiment about the remaining trappings of monarchy may well have prompted the PNP administration to restate its commitment to the changing of the guard and a new constitution after the elections.

In the matter of abandoning the Privy Council, the attitude to the death penalty is an intrinsic element, particularly in the wake of the famous Pratt and Morgan ruling which has had profound implications for local jurisprudence. But herein lies potential embarrassment for Bruce Golding.

It is a matter of record that before the 2002 General Election, this headline appeared in The Gleaner of September 21, 2002 : 'Golding raps the PNP's 'appetite for hanging'.' The report under that headline had the following: 'Mr. Golding's comments came only a day after Amnesty International accused the Government of promising to resume hanging as a bait in the coming general election.'

That bait has returned in the current campaign with an unequivocal platform commitment from Mr. Golding himself that a JLP government will resume hanging, which has not taken place since 1988. This clearly is prompted by the often documented popular view that hanging should resume in the face of a murder rate said to be one of the highest in the world.

There is no question that the protracted debate about constitutional reform should be resolved as quickly as is practical under the next administration. The kerfuffle about the Green Paper therefore may be a useful preview for the fundamental questions of reform to be faced under a new government.